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So, I survived my Computer Vision presentation. As it turned out many kids had taken on larger than they expected projects and were only partially done. I ended up presenting on all that I had learned about epipolar geometry, and showing off my epipolar lines I was able to recover from the  stereo images. I still want to try and get some more of the script working before the report is due Friday night. Today I have my last final which is in Artificial Intelligence. Hopefully this will go well. I’m just happy to be done after this, I’m exhausted and quiver to think that if I don’t pass one of my classes, I will be under the same workload next quarter as I was this quarter. So far I have one passing grade out of 5 classes, just 4 more grades to wait on. Having been through a quarter with 20 units now, I can safely say that 20 units at UCI is nothing like 20 units at Saddleback. The amount of work I received in homework, projects, tests, and quizzes was immense. I just hope that this quarter works out so that I only have one more before graduation.

On a more depressing note, our timeshare is completely booked because of Spring Break, so I won’t be able to escape as I had planned. I’ll have to try and come up with something else :(. There appears to be plenty of stuff for me to work on over spring break, so I might just end up working for most of it which is good and bad, I need to get some money in to help pay for taxes as well as get my bank account replenished for after taxes. I saw one or two cool toys I might like to have, but ultimately I’m pretty content with everything I have at the moment. Shuttle is getting closer to releasing the X50 which I have been watching carefully in hopes that they might release it. I could see some very exciting uses for that machine, and with the knowledge I have gained over this past quarter in computer vision I have a renewed vigor with which I want to pursue learning OpenGL again. I really want to program some stuff in 3D. We’ll see if I can keep my focus long enough to make something of that. The shuttle machine would be a great platform for testing out some of my ideas, a 3D interface on a touch screen I think would be a very cool thing.

Well, I survived my first week of classes. This quarter will definitely force me to work on my time management skills. I’ve been quite productive this weekend so far. I got lots of chores done. I still have a good bit of school and consulting work to complete. I’ve made a start on all the projects I have been assigned so far. The first project for one of my classes is due on Monday, along with a quiz in another class. This next week will really show me what I’m in for since most of my teachers were kind enough to hold off homework until the second week. I’ll post an update as I finish some of those school projects, I’m hoping I can turn blogging into a way of organizing my thoughts for the quarter. That will not only force me to write posts, but hopefully help with the great challenge that lies before me. I have a fellow student who was originally enrolled in 4 classes all of which he had with me. He told me had attempted 4 classes the prior quarter and had struggled horribly with it. So, he decided to drop one of the classes for this quarter. When I told him I had 5 classes and a full 20 units he went quiet and wished me luck. Only time will tell what will happen.

So, today I figured out what the storm of work is largely composed of, and that is school work. Unpaid, un-exciting, school work. I don’t think this is all of the work, but based on what I see I will be doing homework non-stop for the next 56 hours or so. Then, I get to start working again next week when another large project is due, along with midterms. As a nice cherry on top of all that, I found out today that I will have 3 of my 4 finals on the same day, the last day before Christmas break. At this point I’m so drained I have nowhere to go but forward. We’ll see what happens, will I end up in a mental institution, will I pass all my classes, will I be broke and living on the streets? Stay tuned for the next exciting update of my life.

I’m feeling myself ramp up. I’m getting more stuff done in a day, getting projects moving. I noticed today that things have been too quiet during my down time over the last few weeks. I fear that the work was waiting for me to come back. I had several jobs come into me today, nothing set in stone, but what appears and feels like the calm before the storm kind of thing. With several large projects due in the next couple of weeks, and midterms next week this could be a very interesting time. Things are moving on all fronts and new fronts. Still no word as to whether or not I might procure a part time job, but I’m still hopeful. Several coding things are coming in as well as some new ideas. I think I might be out of my rut and way beyond where I had hoped to stop. Only time will tell.

So, looking back I was considerably less productive this weekend than I had hoped. Nothing I had hoped to accomplish was done, I ended up working on both Saturday and Sunday. I had planned on working today (Sunday), but only for around 3hrs. This seemingly small job turned into a 6hr computer marathon. Like an idiot on Saturday night I started to play around with the idea of putting Linux on my primary computer which runs off of a RAID 0 array. I had never been able to get it to work, but decided to mess with it. I ended up blowing out my array, thankfully I had made a backup in case this happened, which killed my Windows install. I decided to split the array and run Linux on one drive and Windows on the other. I had to wrestle with Linux for several hours to get my three monitors working. In the end, I got everything working, but at the expense of my compiz effects that I love so much. Perhaps with Intrepid Ibex I will be able to make this work. The only high note I can leave this weekend with is that I made some good money today towards purchasing my new server. On the downside I have lost two days of work on my projects as well as valuable homework time. I may see if I can get something accomplished on this front tonight before I hit the sack tonight. Monday is going to have to be extra productive to put me back on schedule.

For the first time in 13 years of working with computers I was told by a client that they don’t think I know what I’m doing. I should have known this was inevitable having worked with so many people, but I can honestly say I wasn’t entirely prepared for it. The client caimed that an error message stating that “A program has stopped responding” was my fault and that since it popped up after I had worked on her computer coupled with several other minor problems that I was the idiot. This coming from a person that knows when she double clicks the “E” on her desktop that a magic window appears on her screen. I was generous enough to cut my rate and have put in over 8 hours on a stupid project that I billed a single hour for (old people are the stingiest people on earth). This will now mark my third return to work on this computer because the user wasn’t quite sure what she did with her computer. Every shortcut, every button was a guessing game trying to re-create the old computer she had that I never saw. I can safely say that I will not be working with many senior citizens in the future that don’t have computer knowledge.

So, yesterday was not as productive as I would have liked in terms of my projects. However, on the brightside I did work a 5hr job which will help financially at the moment, and may even help me start to procure parts for my new server. This weekend I have a good amount of homework I need to complete, as well as a single job on Sunday which will take around 3hrs. So, I should have some time to get a lot of work done on my projects. As an update for you TF2 fans, I realized I hadn’t posted any screenshots in a while, so here is what I found in my screenshot folder.

I have always been a big movie buff, I memorize the lines of my favorite films, and relate them to life or try to live life through them. Recently life has slipped into the stereotypical shift of focus. For comparison today, we have “The Devil Wears Prada”. In the movie, Andy must choose between her relationship and her career.  As she begins to accel at one, the other must suffer. I always wondered why she couldn’t just be good at both, I have always been able to handle several things at once in my life why can’t she. I have now begun to see this delema in my own life. The bottom line comes down to time. It is not our unwillingness to succeed at multiple things, it is our time limitation. As I have begun to shift my focus towards my business and work, my education has slid rapidly down the hill. This never used to be a problem, and this is my cause for concern. I have always been able to juggle school and work without a problem. Why now, when the cost is so high must it become an issue. I have been working since I was 14 and attending school at the same time. Seven years of experience should make anybody good at something, but I fear I have only gotten worse. Is it that one consumes me more, that I’m more driven to succeed at one than the other? Am I giving 100%? In my head I want to blame someone else, and yet I can’t logically select any individual except myself. In order to confront this behavior I have decided to keep track of how much time I spend doing various things. Perhaps I can shed some light on what is utilizing the most time in my day. How did I come to this point? Everything I want to get done isn’t, and everything that needs to get done isn’t, and everthing I have to get done isn’t. What is???

So, in the last two weeks I have setup two computers with Windows XP 64bit edition. I can honestly say I now consider this the most limited OS ever created. If you think Linux can be limiting try using an iPhone or an Epson scanner with XP 64. iPhones are officially unsupported on XP 64 including Mobile Me, the icon of which isn’t even installed. Epson completely missed the memo that XP 64 exists, unlike several companies worth mentioning. Canon, Asus, Dell, and HP, to name a few I had to deal with, all had proper drivers for their hardware. I will think twice before ever using a 64 bit desktop ever again.

So, another large gap has managed to slip its way into my blog writing and so much has happened. I’m feeling far more settled into my new job. Waking up in the morning is a usual occurrence rather than a startling nightmare. I really like the people I work with and I’m learning a lot researching solutions and scripting things for the servers. Speaking of which I plan on doing a write up on creating ADM policy files for Server 2003 R2 SP2. I spent the better part of a day trying to get a simple script working with almost no luck. In the end I found some example code and all is working wonderfully now. Last quarter is completely over and I can’t believe it, but it appears as though I escaped unscathed by some miracle. Not my best quarter, but I’m not going to turn down 3 B’s. That was a very welcome discovery today. I’m looking forward to the fresh start at school next week. I will need to figure out my schedule a bit more and hammer out the details, but I should end up with the 4 classes I want. I’ve been working on several side jobs and hopefully I can keep everything tidily balanced and running smoothly. I have started to pickup my coding tasks and moving forward with those. Sadly I haven’t been able to work on my projects for quite some time. I’m probably going to wait until my financial situation levels out before pursuing any new projects. The timing of this new job worked out perfectly, I will have 3 weeks of work on my first paycheck and I’ve worked nearly full time for the last two weeks because of finals and spring break. So, even though I didn’t get much of a vacation I can hopefully get my finances back in line.